Medicine · a Light

A Cairo hospital was endowed to turn nobody away

The Mamluk sultan Qalawun founded a hospital in Cairo in 1284, on the site of a former Fatimid palace, as part of a complex that also held a school and his tomb. Its endowment deed, a legal document that survives, set out how it was to run: separate wards for different illnesses, a pharmacy, a library, a salaried staff of physicians, oculists and surgeons, and treatment funded by the endowment so that payment was never required of the patient. Sick people who could not work were given an allowance on discharge. Endowed hospitals of this kind, called bimaristans, existed across the Muslim world from the ninth century. The Cairo site has served the sick almost continuously since, and an eye hospital still operates there.

Bimaristan al-Mansuri · Cairo, 1284 CE